"He said, 'I don't know anything about hernias, but I've got a guy,' and they called me. So that's how I got involved," said Dr. Wright. "So I went in on a Saturday morning and was not expecting to operate on a 450-pound gorilla, but there I was."

Wright said gorillas and humans share a similar anatomy, so the actual operation was very much the same as operating on a human.

"The recovery is a little bit different. It's hard to tell a gorilla not to do what a gorilla wants. So it's an early recovery after surgery. He was up and moving right away," said Wright.

Vip is already up and back to normal, mostly because it's hard to tell a gorilla to take it easy.